The Science of Mattering: Why Feeling Seen Is a Human Need | Gordon Flett – EP 733

23:34John R. Miles:as we can see that there's other people who seem to have lives that are just great. And they're getting the attention and the sense of mattering that other people, a lot of these, of course, are crafted images of lives that don't actually exist, which has been discovered in some sad situations. So we have the circumstance where people are going, well, I don't feel it. I don't see it in my own life, when look at these people over here, it could even be a sibling, you know, where there's a favorite child amongst them and everybody knows it, although nobody will acknowledge it. And you can say that you're not getting the attention even within your own family.

24:10John R. Miles:But the reason why it hurts is that because people, when you go back to what mattering is, it was used as a guide for self-evaluation, reflected appraisal on the self. So ultimately, you can come up with the sense that, you know, you are just not somebody that is of interest were worth being pursued. And I always mention in terms of past theorists that Gregory Brown, who was a student of Morris Rosenberg, in his book, he talks about the abject feeling of feeling that you don't matter because it's a sense of profound social rejection. And if you're not getting a sense of mattering through your relationships or through organizations, organizations you can feel profoundly rejected and he talks about this in the concept of the work by Williams on being ostracized where you feel that you're so far removed and it's not just through lack of attention that people are actually keeping you at a distance but of course it's also the case that people who feel that way often keep themselves at a distance because they're expecting negative responses from others when in fact they might be getting positive.

25:19John R. Miles:I just want to underscore again, though, that mattering is a subjective appraisal. And to underscore that people can be so inaccurate in terms of this, one thing that we studied through our school board project was we asked the young people whether they felt they mattered. And about 35 % of them either said, I don't matter, or I don't know if I matter. And we asked parents, is it possible that your child feels like he, she doesn't matter? And only 8 % of parents said that they felt like it could be that their child has a sense of not mattering. So I'm saying, well, there's about one out of five kids are walking around with a feeling of, I don't matter, yet their parents think they do matter.

26:03John R. Miles:Whenever I mentioned this in an audience of parents, they're horrified, looks because now they're thinking is this my kit so what i tell them is just make it so that they know they matter you know whether it's small things you do or big things or just tell them so that and but the best is to just to show through little considerations you know if somebody's been away just say you were thinking about them miss them there's so many different ways of doing it my wife back when i started and we were a single income family often i would find a note for a road trip that she had left when she had packed my bag because she's way better than I am and or in my lunch and I know she did this with our daughters and that you know even just writing somebody a note because we don't write notes to people anymore and that that can also show it so if you're not sure whether somebody in your life has a feeling of matter and you think they do but you're not sure just show them and there's a multitude of ways you can do that so since you

27:02Gordon Flett:brought up that 8 % of parents, which to me is drastically low. I think they just probably don't want to admit that it's happening, but it could be maybe they don't realize the warning signs. Do you have some tips that you could give for a parent who might be listening if their child feels that they don't matter? How can they see it? First of all, it's going to be a sign that they might feel they don't matter if they're not

27:31John R. Miles:not engaging. They're locking the door a lot. They're not spending time. One thing I want to point out though, is that the underestimates of parents also applies to mental health issues in general. It's well known through multiple studies that parents underestimate the despair and that kids because they're so good at hiding behind a facade or throwing themselves into things like sports or friendships, but nobody ever really taps into how they're feeling inside. So the outside doesn't match the inside. I would just say if, and again, if the child seems too unflappable, that to me is an indication.

28:10John R. Miles:I'm particularly concerned about the perfectionistic young people who put on the perfect front. And then we hear a sad story where somebody says, nobody knew that this was a problem. I mean, they didn't know that he or she was feeling this way. But I say, you know, just find ways to engage. And the best way is to find some group things where you can just spend time together. One of the best solved indicators of a sense of mattering, especially when there's been a breakup in the family, a single parent situation, is how much time the parent spends with the child in things where they seem to be enjoying each other's company.

28:46John R. Miles:And that can give a, you know, but also just asking questions in a way that will elicit a sense of what's going on for that child's feelings. So just as an illustration of this, my wife has relatives in Hingham, Massachusetts, and almost all of them are retired teachers. My wife is a retired educator as well. So we were there visiting one day while back, and Jane, who's a fabulous retired educator, has her grandchild coming in. And I watch as Jane sits the child down and says, hey how'd your day go tell me one good thing about your day and listens and just listening to them talk and without interrupting that deep sense of somebody's taking the time to ask me but now they're listening to me is a key thing and then she'll say now tell me something that wasn't so great about your day which is a way to get into whether there's bullying or exclusion or ostracism or you know teacher didn't respond the way that jane would have if she was the teacher And it just keeps the dialogue going where you can just show through your interest and that you're trying to understand what it's like to be that young person sends an incredible message of not only trying to understand, but also acceptance and just finding ways to get more dialogue.

30:07John R. Miles:If there's no conversation going on, odds are there's something that's sadly being hidden.

30:13Gordon Flett:Gord, you have written about the healing power and the core need of mattering. And when I've read your work, what really strikes me is that you're reframing mattering from a helpful psychological construct into something that's far more consequential, meaning it's a foundational human need with profound healing potential. And I think that is the thing to highlight here. So I want to talk about this in children. Why is mattering such a core developmental need for kids?

30:49John R. Miles:The first element of this is that some kids are insecure. There's certainly the uncertainty of going through and not knowing what could happen. And it can just provide a sense of reassurance and guidance, provides the closeness and comfort of a parent or a grandparent or a guardian is there to really interact at a close level. And I can give you an example of this. I'm not going to go big into storytelling, but I remember vividly, as most people do, because I was old enough for it to be around when it happened, the day that JFK was assassinated. I came home for lunch because I had both my grandmother, who lived with us, and my mother at home.

31:30John R. Miles:And I came home for lunch. And the TV is on. So I'm eating my lunch. I remember even it was tomato soup, Campbell's tomato soup. and on comes the story that seems to be a problem in Dallas. And then eventually Walter Conkite comes on with the news that shook the world. And I sat there and my mother and my grandmother were there. And of course, this is the like childhood is over in terms of my sense of innocence from this point on. So my mother and grandmother said, well, you're not going back to school. You're going to stay here. We're just going to talk about this because they wanted to try and make me realize that I'm not have to worry personally and just help through the confusion.

32:13John R. Miles:And when somebody shows that sensitivity to you, especially at a young age, you don't forget it in terms of knowing, again, that if something were to happen down the road, you could then go and seek these people out. And this is the key thing in terms of establishing these relationships. There are times when young people in particular suffering from mental health issues need to get help and need to acknowledge help, but they never will. When you have a mattering relationship where there's acceptance, it's more likely that a young person would reveal to a mother, a father, a grandparent that they need help and that can set them off in a way.

32:49John R. Miles:I was even at a conference one time, an unbelievable story, so I won't get into it, but I was invited to an anti-terrorism conference for my work on perfectionism. And at the break comes a guy and he says to me, I'm talking to you now as a father, I'm not talking to you as an analyst for CSIS in Canada, which is our agency that deals with counterterrorism and that, because my daughter has revealed to me that she's a student in Quebec and that she's suicidal. So this is one of the first times when I said, you know, I'm here to talk about perfectionism, but this is where mattering comes into play.

33:24John R. Miles:Because I said to him, whatever you've done to create a relationship where your daughter will admit to you and your wife that she's feeling this way, keep doing that and just keep checking in on her and reminding her. And a key thing that parents need to realize is that as kids get older and we get into the adolescence, oh, they want to be with their friends. They don't want their parents to bug them. They still want the attention, even if they won't admit it or they'll say, get away, leave me alone. Not to the point where you're a helicopter parent, certainly. But I think the problem is for a lot of young people, they get that attention earlier in life, starting with the early years.

34:02John R. Miles:And they might get it through the more earlier stages, in terms of like me and grade one there when that news came at lunch. But then some parents feel that they're not effective or they're not wanted and they stop trying. And a big factor with parents is their feeling of efficacy as a parent. Parents need to matter too. And expressing this and finding ways to nurture the mutual need will keep these relationships going. But it's so hardwired. And I do believe that, you know, they talk about psychological needs. The three that people talk about are the need for communion, people like at University of Rochester, the need for connection and the need for autonomy.

34:41John R. Miles:And I've always said the fourth need is the need to matter. And we have seen in the anti-mattering work that if you feel like you don't matter, that people are treating you like you're invisible and unwanted and not even insignificant but insignificant. If you're actually feeling this way, it impacts those other needs where you don't feel as confident anymore. You don't feel that you can go out and do something where you can make things happen in terms of autonomy. So it's a core need, but it also relates to other needs and other needs as well, like in terms of the need for attention and the need just for somebody to be checking in on you.

35:21But I see that the sort of thing,

35:24John R. Miles:it's great if it's satisfied, but you need to keep having it satisfied. And sadly, there's so many people out there who don't have their need for mattering to be satisfied. And I'm actually doing some work with a colleague in Italy, Sylvia Cassell, where we've created a measure of the unmet need to matter. And it's robustly correlated with anti-mattering and a hypersensitivity being hurt when somebody treats you like you don't matter. We need to get more people addressing that core need.

35:57Gordon Flett:Howard, I want to give you some different scenarios to try to make this real for people who are listening, especially those who are parents, but also those who might have experienced a feeling they didn't matter as a child, and now it's cascaded into their adult life. So when I think of mattering, I think there's a huge correlation between self-efficacy or self-worth and how that shapes us. And when I think about how kids grow up, there are kind of three groupings that I see. There's the grouping where a child has a parent who is really concerned about their performance. This is kind of the lawnmower parent, the helicopter parent.

36:42Gordon Flett:And so the child feels like they have to perform in order to feel their self-worth. There's another category, I think, of parents who teach the child that their silence is how they earn mattering. Just be quiet. Don't say anything. You don't have a voice in the family. And so that's how they learn their performance. And then I think there's a third category that ends up showing up where the parent is so distracted. And as you mentioned, parents need to feel like they matter. Maybe they have reached this point where they don't feel like they matter and they're completely tuned out. So the child is trying to express things to them and they're so tuned out to worried about work or their phone or something else that the child just stops bringing their intentions to them.

37:39Gordon Flett:Do you think I'm categorizing this right? And if so, what then happens to those children across a lifetime from that early upbringing?

37:49John R. Miles:What I recognize there is that there are different pathways to that sense of not mattering. and sometimes it's neglect and non-involvement. Sometimes it's, you know, a parent might be incapacitated with their own health issues. Rosenberg talked about narcissistic parents being so involved with themselves that they can't connect with the other people in their lives. But at the end of the day, some people are carrying this around with them, as you said, and it's a lifelong pattern and there's incredible stress and upset. But there's also people who break out of that. And that's, I think, where there's a role for the school to be played in terms of this.

38:26John R. Miles:We had a great school where our daughters benefited and we became involved as parents and were part of the school council. So that, you know, what I tell schools, and I'd be giving a talk on Monday to a bunch of educators in Quebec, and I say, the kid who comes to school not feeling a sense of mattering at home really needs to get that sense of mattering at school. And this is why educators resonate with the concept of mattering, because there are those stories of the one caring adult who has changed a kid's life entirely by showing an interest and becoming the mentor to that child. You know, there are those routes to get out of it, but sadly, there are those people who have got a sense of abandonment or lack of interest and then never snap out of it.

39:15John R. Miles:But I still say that there's room for hope. in situations like that, where I've talked to people like that, I say to them, you can generate your own sense of mattering through this focus on service, making a difference in other people's lives in a way that you don't rely on somebody treating you the right way. And then ideally, it'll become a reciprocal mattering relationship where, you know, you've made them feel like they matter and it feeds back into you. Or you can see the way that people get so animated when somebody's taking an interest in them and showing that they really care. But I've often asked myself, does anything make up for the sense of I had a parent who wasn't really interested in me?

39:56John R. Miles:It's a pretty tough thing to overcome, but you can blunt it to some extent and learn to develop other relationships. And we've seen cases where people might not have the ideal nuclear family origins that they want, but they've met somebody who's changed their life, who becomes their partner. So, and this is the thing about mattering is that I always say that it comes wrapped around the sense of hope. They're strongly related in terms of research and people are very hopeful if they have a sense of mattering. I just wanted to say one thing about self-efficacy that you were mentioning. I was just reading last night some of the classic work by a researcher named Descharm on the feelings of young people feeling like they're either a pawn, where they're being pushed around a board by other people with little significance, or they're actually having a sense of agency.

40:47John R. Miles:And he contrasted people as pawns versus origins. And I was reading this, and I was thinking, if you're a child that has a sense of mattering, you are going to fall into that origin category where people have said, we believe you can find the ways to address things. You can overcome things. We have a faith in you that you might not even have in yourself. and I think that this is where a lot of the positive benefits of mattering come from this sense of you know I'm an origin I make things happen and not to the point becomes narcissistic that's where you know healthy respect for others and asking about others and how they're doing gives that sense of otherness and I thought it's too bad that the charm's not around these days to talk about this concept and how they would be connected but origins and school situations they did better, they're more engaged, less likely to get into trouble in terms of violent behavior or truancy.

41:42John R. Miles:And consistently, you see with mattering, including research with young children, that not only is there a sense of hope, there's a very strong sense of agency that I can make things happen, which is why it's a key factor in terms of promoting resilience and also adaptability, which we've shown in some of our work.

42:01Gordon Flett:Gord, I have a philosophical question for you. Do you think strengthening mattering in childhood could shift population level mental health?

42:09John R. Miles:Oh, yes, I do. I believe that if there's a societal focus on mattering, that will shift population health. First of all, it's important to point out that there's now about 10 studies that have shown that mattering is associated with the core health in terms of self-rated, but also objective measures. But I look at it in terms of how many people are out there feeling marginalized and feeling unimportant in society. We know that in community research done with surveys of children in the United States, that when asked, do you matter in the community? About half of the young people say, I don't matter in the community.

42:49John R. Miles:And then it's worse if there's other forms of marginalization or stereotype or stigma. So LGBTQ kids, it's about only one in three say I matter in the community. And I said, until we address that as a basic indicator, we're going to see all kinds of problems emerging through either depression and mental health or some of the more violent episodes that are there. And it doesn't take a lot. That's what frustrates me about why we don't have more of a prevention mode. It doesn't take a lot to go and change and give somebody a sense of mattering in society. One person can literally change somebody's life in terms of this.

43:26John R. Miles:And we need to do this broadly. And I had a colleague who was talking about, she sat in on a proposal for a giant resilience project and they were getting millions of dollars to do this. She sat there listening and said, they've covered every construct in psychology except mattering, self-regulation, mindfulness, and just generic talk about resilience and just saying, you know, if mattering was prioritized, that this would address so much of the issues that are there in terms of the mental health, because I do believe that, you know, not mattering can make you susceptible to these problems, but also if you feel like you don't matter, it's going to impact the course of recovery once you have sought help.

44:10John R. Miles:And that's what I talk about in terms of the healing power of mattering, the importance of having mattering-centered therapy relationships as well, or sites that are dedicated to getting everybody to feel like they matter. It frustrates me because a little bit could go such a long way. And for those who need to have it in terms of dollars or cents, I prefer to focus on the human costs of not promoting mattering, but the actual costs in terms of, we're talking workplace absenteeism, lost productivity, cost to the health system. There are so many objective indicators that would suggest this is the way to go as well.

44:47John R. Miles:But at the end of the day, of course, the people who engage in this just feel better about themselves in terms of making a difference in somebody else's life. So yeah, if there's somebody out there with a trillion dollars and they want to really make a difference, and I've heard this because I've sat in on meetings with donors, nobody with a trillion in my role formerly as research dean at our university and faculty of health, These people, big donors, there's a subset of them who really do want to improve society. And I would say, if that's the case, take that money, put it into action in terms of promoting mattering, and you'll never be feeling that there was an ounce of energy or money wasted.

45:30Gordon Flett:Yeah, because this is really a systems change. If you think about it, it's systematic change across society. And I want to go back to something you brought up earlier, Gord. You didn't mention his name when you brought it up, but in your work, you referenced Uri Broffenbrenner's idea and you phrased it differently, but it's basically every child needs someone who's crazy about them. Yes. And you've kind of talked about what happens psychologically to children who don't experience this. But if policymakers truly understood this principle, how might schools, communities, or mental health systems look different?

46:07I have to say about Uri Bronfenbrenner, a hero of mine, and I actually had a very close

46:12John R. Miles:brush with him because I was at a conference in Washington and I was speaking with my wife. I said, wait a minute, I hear a voice behind me. I know who that voice is. And I want to point out he was often in Washington because he was going in front of the policymakers in terms of advocacy and the main message there of somebody needs to be crazy about the kid. So what this would look like in terms of societal change, just as one example, I've made the case and gone on radio in Canada saying, why don't we just have an hour a week in the schools, forget about the curriculum, and let's just focus on promoting the well -being of these young people and their teachers and everybody else in the school in a way that will also intrigue many of them to pursue a career probably in psychology or counseling.

46:57John R. Miles:and I've seen schools that have done this and unfortunately it's not documented where people can find it but just one example we had this resilience project with six schools and I oversaw the research and I actually looked at every single data point for every kid in that study and I got to the point where I'm saying okay did our resilience intervention work in terms of the experimental ones that received their intervention versus the control group and I immediately looked and realized it had failed horribly because there was one school of the control schools that had kids with astronomically high resilience scores and well-being scores.

47:38John R. Miles:So I went to the school board people I was working with and I said, what's going on with that one school? And they said, oh, yeah, they're one of our best schools. On Mondays, they have mental health Mondays school-wide. And on Fridays, they have physical fitness Fridays school-wide. And I said, why did you pick them as a control group? Because my advice now is do what they're doing. Because the message that comes on Monday, every Monday and every Friday is that we care about you to the point we're taking school time and we're making this a focus. It doesn't have to take great resources. It doesn't have to take cash outlays.

48:18John R. Miles:It just means it needs to be a focus where the message is sent, hey, we care about you here so that these are kids who want to get to school and stay engaged as opposed to staying home and dropping off the radar. And this school did it. And I've seen another project. Unfortunately, it didn't go to fruition because the key people at another school board retired. But I asked them, in all the schools you have with all the data, because I got them to ask mattering, can you find me schools that are doing way better in terms of kids feeling like they matter versus ones who don't? And they said, yes, here it is.

48:52And it wasn't correlated with size of school or well-being, but there was something going on. I said, the next step is we go back and we see what's going on in those schools, starting with the leadership, that it prioritizes the human relationship side, which then feeds into resilience and adaptability.

49:13John R. Miles:The one school board I worked with, by the way, much of their interest initially was because they were having kids with behavioral problems, including things that are not something you want from a lawful perspective. And I said, but what you find when you focus on mattering is that you'll address those behavioral problems. You'll see that there's a mental health boost for most kids. But also you'll see a payoff for those superintendents out there who are just worried about the bottom line in terms of test scores. Test scores are higher too. because in fact they're engaged. They want to be there.

49:47John R. Miles:They're learning. Mattering has a great learning and growth orientation that comes along with it, along with the hope. So we could do things. We could do things in business. And I know that the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Murthy, when he was in charge, had Mattering as one of the five pillars of workplace mental health. This was an extension of his work on loneliness and the loneliness epidemic. So places that really embrace this are going to see the benefits in a way that, you know, and other people will want to be there. That's the other thing in terms of attracting people and having your choice of who you'd like to have.

50:24John R. Miles:So there's so many things that can be done societally. We just need to make it a priority once and for all, rather than talking about it.

50:32Gordon Flett:Gord, I want to make sure I mentioned Angela Myers in our conversation. You and I were talking about her before we came on the show, and she's also been talking about this since the early 2000s. And it was about during that time when mattering was identified as a pillar of positive youth development alongside self-efficacy, which we've already talked about. But the field ended up focusing really heavily on achievement and then not enough on mattering, as we've been discussing. Do you believe we've lost time, perhaps even a generation, as Jonathan hate wrote about by not elevating mattering sooner?

51:13John R. Miles:Back in 2002, this big committee came up with the six keys to positive youth development. And the support for efficacy and mattering was one of the six key components. And then I've traced it through and go, well, what happened? Well, much of that focused on the efficacy, the mattering got lost in the shuffle, in part because mattering wasn't the bigger research focus that it is today it was only around that time that research on mattering started started to accumulate and but the thing is if you talk to individuals like you talk to educators you talk to coaches they know this they know the value of showing somebody that you care about them so it has been a lost opportunity and you know if i was sitting there doing a scorecard i go well unfortunately there was the answer provided 20 years ago and nothing systematic or programmatic came out of that, I could tell.

52:13John R. Miles:And by the way, I tried to trace the origins of where did this come from? Why did it end up on their radar as opposed to being lost in the shuffle back in the early 2000s? And it came out of research on farm communities and especially 4-H communities. And this resonates with me because my daughter Allison, the psychologist, just married a dairy farmer who was the kid across the hall. So I've talked to people in the community where two of our grandchildren are. And I remember I was talking to Jeremy's mother, who's co-running the dairy farm with him now. And I said, you know, the value of kids having a role and a responsibility where they know that their livelihood of the family might depend on it.

52:58John R. Miles:Well, farm communities, farm families learned this very early on. And of course, it was tested back from the Great Depression and Dust Bowl days. And I said, but it's too bad that we don't find a way to take that focus and emphasis because everybody needs to feel needed. And when kids have a responsibility, like if you look at the dairy farm that our son-in-law operates with his mother, they're all needing to be involved with this. Even our daughter, the psychologist, when she's not giving online therapy to some of the people she treats with problems like OCD, she's in charge of feeding the baby calves that are born.

53:35The idea that it's clearly documented that there's this benefit.

53:40John R. Miles:Some of the higher community mattering scores come from farming communities, especially kids who are in 4-H and going, again, let's just do what they do. But literally there was two decades lost and you could say three decades in terms of really needing much more of the focus on mattering that we now have.

53:57Gordon Flett:I want to hone in on what you're just talking about, because what you're saying here is that these kids are experiencing more mattering because they're kind of feeling it through experience and you've spent decades now studying mattering scientifically but for most kids they don't encounter as rebecca goldstein would say this mattering instinct in research papers they encounter it through relationships and stories so i recently wrote a children's book called You Matter Luma as a way to create a story to help carry this message to kids. And I want to ask you, Gord, from a scientific perspective, can a repeated message that a child matters shape their development?

54:43Gordon Flett:Can stories influence a child's sense of work?

54:46John R. Miles:Yes. And my wife is actually a retired school librarian. It's the stories and their content, but it's the people with you, like when you're reading stories together, or you want to share things together, there's a sense of community and communion there that makes a difference. But kids learn from the stories. And your book, I can't wait to actually see it. I know it's in the mail, but kids learn from the shared stories and also their stories. Like I would say, this is a great opportunity to say to kids, what's your story? If you've ever felt like this, have you got something that you need to share do you think you could make a difference where you might be feeling lonely and then kids gravitate towards you?

55:32John R. Miles:But yes, just seeing the difference. And there's real life examples of this as well that I think can be pointed to that parents and teachers can point to in terms of somebody who has got on the mattering track and really made a difference in the lives of others. I'm fascinated by those people who seem to be heaven sent. Angela Myers is one of them, by the way. I think, you know, it's no coincidence that Angel is in her first name, where she has dedicated herself to going around. She tells me she's talked to hundreds of thousands of kids, telling them stories, making them feel special, but mostly also wanting to hear from them in terms of how they're doing.

56:11John R. Miles:So stories can make an incredible difference, though. And I'm very glad to learn about your book. And I knew that it's been in the works for a while, because, you know, there's the message in the book, but there's also the conversations that come around the book, you know, where a parent or an educator could say, okay, now let's talk about this concept in terms of a time when you might have felt you mattered or you didn't matter. So it's a way of opening the doors to these conversations that need to take place. And also, mattering makes people feel good. I just had a paper accepted where I looked at some of these actual feelings in terms of the positive affect that comes from this.

56:52John R. Miles:So it's going to give a boost to spirits and that's going to open the door to other emotions. And when it's shrouded in hope, why wouldn't the kids then say, hey, maybe I can be somebody who makes a difference by gathering together others and showing them that I care about them. And, you know, that's how we're going to get a whole bunch more educators and counselors and psychologists. Angela's done this, by the way, where she was a classroom teacher for many years. She's done this because she told me that each week she would pick five kids to give them the individual attention that they may not get in a bigger class.

57:27And she says, you know,

57:29John R. Miles:by the end of the week, these kids are transformed because the teacher has centered them out. But everybody knows that everybody's going to get a chance and it's going to be this way. And she says, this is how we end up with kids who understand what it feels like to matter and become what she calls mattering ambassadors. And she's now doing work in Appalachia in some very poor areas to try and give those kids a sense of mattering and hope in addition to how they're already feeling. Her dedication to this is because she's seen how it transforms lives and always in a good way, I suppose. And especially needed if you've had experience as the anti-mattering, you need to build the positive mattering as a buffer to that.

58:10Gordon Flett:the work she's doing is exactly where it begins in the ones and zeros that you start influencing. And because you never understand how far a ripple by changing one of those lives can change the trajectory for the future. And one of the other ulterior motives I had with the book is I think parents are spending less and less time with their kids in full presence. So my thought process was if you give them a book about mattering, and it takes about 15 to 20 minutes to properly go through this, and they do it repeatedly, you're helping the parent also see the five-year-old in themselves, but you're giving them undivided attention with the child on this topic, reinforcing again and again, you matter and changing the conversation that they're having with the kid, because it opens up the opportunity to ask them more in-depth questions, which I'm hoping will create more of a ripple effect.

59:09Gordon Flett:Do you think there's some science that backs that?

59:13John R. Miles:Well, you know, we always talk about the contagion of things that aren't so good, but I do believe that once you experience it, you know the concept. I've seen this with adults too. Once you have this lens on the world about valuing people. You interact differently with people. You see things that other people might not see. I was talking to a principal, now superintendent, who had a situation with a teacher who had to be suspended for, I don't know what happened there. But when he came back, you know, because he knew about mattering, the principal is looking and he sees this guy who's ashamed of himself for whatever happened, I don't know.

59:49John R. Miles:And he's sitting in the lunchroom with all these other teachers off by himself. And he said, knowing what I knew about mattering, I couldn't leave that guy sitting there by himself. I needed to know that he was forgiven. He did his time for whatever was the problem and that I was welcoming him back. And this principal told me, he then got promoted. And he said that when he went and told this fellow who he'd now built this connection with and sort of built him back up, he says, rare, but the other teacher, he started to cry because he was now losing the guy that had seen him when everybody else was off to the side.

1:00:26John R. Miles:So, you know, I do believe it can create this. And for kids, once kids learn about mattering, I know the New York Times article from about two years ago now had a write-in segment, and kids were saying in there, you know, now that I know about this, I'm going to do something about it. But the part about the connection with the parents too, like undivided time where there's no looking at the phone and social media where the kid is the focus. And I came up with this through fluke that our daughter, Alison, who's now the psychologist, whenever she would go to bed, she'd have trouble going to sleep.

1:01:04John R. Miles:So I invented something called boy stories, where I would start telling her sometimes truthful, sometimes fabricated stories about me growing up, starting with the time my friend and I went to local golf course to get golf balls in the water in the deep dark night. And, you know, we built this bond because even when she got older and she'd be past the age of wanting to have this, she said, tell me a boy story. I said, well, you've heard of them. Make up a new one. And one of the things I did with both of our daughters, because I never felt that I got enough time with them and with the summer and not teaching a summer course in August, is at the end of the summer, we would have park day, where I said, we're going to start as early as we can get out of the house.

1:01:47John R. Miles:And we're going to go to every single park we can go to until you tell me you haven't had, you've had enough. And that was something we always look forward to, because they knew that it was going to just be me and them having fun, occasional treats, and undivided attention. It was as a reminder that I'm going to be there. And, you know, I've built a bond. And I just want to say for parents who think that the older kids don't need this, well, they do. I'll just briefly tell a story that when our first daughter, who's been dealing with juvenile diabetes since the age of eight, was going off to university, she was going to Ottawa, to Carleton, whereas we live in Mississauga in the greater Toronto area.

1:02:27John R. Miles:And on the way there, I said to Haley, as we're driving her there, and it's very hard, as parents know, when you're leaving the child university for the first time, starting to get that empty nest. I said to her in two weeks, I said, I studied homesickness too. In a couple of weeks, if you need to come home, I will come and get you. And I said, because you need to know your home is still here. We're still here for you as a secure base. And she said, oh, I won't need it. I won't need it. I'm, you know, I'm a tough university student, but it was clear when it was time for us to leave and leave her by herself in Ottawa.

1:03:01John R. Miles:She didn't want us to go. So on the Tuesday of the second week, she phones and she goes, you know that offer of, can I come home? Is it still there? I said, of course it's there. And I said, it's a time unlimited opportunity. Okay. I said, so I'll drive all the way there and all the way back on Thursday. It's like 11 hours in total. And then she says to me, can other people come too? Because I have four other girls who need to come home as well. when they heard about that you had made this offer. So I had a posse of young girls from the same university, drove back and just hearing their stories kept me awake.

1:03:40John R. Miles:And I was able to do the coast to coast to coast trip. But I want to point out for the parents who don't think they're needed and they're not cared about, when it came time to take those girls back on the Sunday, rolled up into the one driveway and there's a dad out there with his daughter saying goodbye to her because he's going back to Ottawa. And the dad is crying buckets of tears and the daughter starts crying bucket of tears because they're missing each other so much. And I said, this is the key thing is like, as a parent, even if you're so busy, just say once in a while, hey, I miss the days when, or I miss the time when, and the reminiscing can make a huge difference.

1:04:19John R. Miles:So I also turned to my daughter who was sitting beside me and I said, she's not going to last at Carleton. This is a one year and done. And sure enough, that student then decided to transfer universities and to come back home just because she was missing being home so much. But clearly it meant such a thing to the parents as well. So I just want to say that it's great if the conversation can continue beyond kids for the age of the book. And it's great if resources are developed. One of Canada's best known children's authors, Eric Walters, who's won the Order of Canada Award, has got a book coming out probably in the next year or so.

1:04:57John R. Miles:And that's how we met. He was a former teacher and social worker. And he's written a book about that one caring adult who changes his life. And the story for teenagers is called Far From the Tree. And it's about a young man who has a history of criminality in his family. His dad's incarcerated, his older brother's incarcerated. But the principal takes an interest in this kid and says, I'm not letting this kid go down that same path. So the principal's looking out for the child. And when the kid's not in school is asking, where are you? And checking in on him, not to the point of harassment. And I asked Eric, I said, why did you decide to pick on this?

1:05:35He goes, I've seen it.

1:05:36John R. Miles:I've seen this in schools that I've been in. And he said he's visited over 2000 schools with his books, Eric Walters. And I said, well, I desperately want this book because then I want to be able to tell audiences that, you know, there's resources available for older kids to to start these same conversations around their need to matter and how an adult can still care for older kids as well.

1:06:02Gordon Flett:Gord, I wasn't even going to bring this up and it's not something I had talked to you about, but since you brought up these different types of programs, one thing I've learned by doing a podcast as long as I have is people don't pay for information, they pay for the application of information. So something I try to do with every episode is I create a workbook so that people will take the ideas from the podcast and apply it in their lives. So when I was writing You Matter Luma, I thought the same thing kind of applies to a children's book. It's one thing for a child to read it, another thing for them to put it into practice.

1:06:38Gordon Flett:So off the back of this, I've done two major steps. The first is I learned about this school in Grand Juncture, Colorado, that needed money so that they could create a new environment in their playgrounds for kids. So they started this kindness challenge. And before they knew it, they had 2000 acts of kindness done in this small school of 300 kids. And it kind of gave me this idea to create this application that we're launching at the same time the book is coming out called Pass the Ripple. And the idea here is for kids to read the book and then to start implementing Ripples of Kindness, which what we're creating in the tool is they can see this grow on a map and how far their ripple goes throughout the world.

1:07:28Gordon Flett:But we are also creating a segment for teachers and educators that's going to be a year-long toolkit so that they can take this Ripple idea embedded into either after-school programs, school programs, to keep this going at the end of the year. We'll create a book for each child that shows how they have become a hero in their own life to the world around them. And then I partnered with a division of Kaplan called AB Studios, and we're actually creating a six-course interactive ecosystem where it's like a Pixar-like environment where the kids can go through these different courses. And then for the educators, we're giving them school tools that they can use that supplement the coursework.

1:08:17Gordon Flett:So it becomes a whole program to embed this into more children's lives. So I know I hadn't told you about it, but I'm really excited about these questions.

1:08:28John R. Miles:Well, it's great. And I'm glad you did because it satisfies my need to see things happen that can really keep these ideas going. And kids, when they're doing that, when they're, you know, their acts of kindness, they'll remember how they felt in terms of that and how they will want to get that feeling. I'm sure what you'll be doing through that is you're going to be creating a whole, you know, legion of kids who say, I want to do something public service wise. or at least if they're going to get locked into the world of achievement and all the pressures there they'll still have a sense of balance in terms of needing that connection with other people and a sense of what's right and wrong in terms of how you treat other people and one of the things that's related to that is you know we hear this talking people talk about how you know we have more similarities than we have differences this will also show the similarities that people have in terms of the common needs and interests and everybody needing to have this kind of experience.

1:09:25John R. Miles:But it's critical, especially, you know, instead of waiting for something to happen, to make things happen like you're doing there, both for the students and the teachers, in ways that can grow. And I'm sure like there will be kids who decide their career path as a result of this kind of experience and how it makes them feel. And, you know, I know a famous researcher Robert J. Sternberg, who studied different types of intelligence, he's talked about gifted kids and how there needs to be something that puts those gifted kids, intellectually gifted and talented kids, puts them on a stream towards public service so that they can use their incredible creativity and insights.

1:10:05John R. Miles:And this is the sort of thing that would take some of those kids and put them in that stream or create a spark with some of these kids where their hidden gifts and talents are then discovered by others. So keep going. And if you can clone yourself, that would be a good thing too.

1:10:22Gordon Flett:Gord, my final question for you is, after a lifetime of studying this, if a child or an adult out there is listening right now who might feel unseen, what would you want

1:10:36John R. Miles:them to hear? I would want them to hear the part about how they can be seen by engaging in things for public service, just checking in on somebody where you don't have to wait, and you can see it. And there are cases, when I talk about the healing power of mattering, I couldn't put everything into the article that's coming out in the next month or so. But there are cases of people who feel like they don't matter. They're depressed. They may have other forms of mental health challenges. And what happened is they got some role, maybe in a treatment facility or in a community. And they said, Hey, wait a minute.

1:11:13John R. Miles:I do make a difference. I do matter. I do have some way of being an origin rather than a pawn. And it's transformed lives. And I can find if I was going on a search, I can find at least 30 stories in published journal articles and chapters where somebody took on a role like that. And it changed their life, as well as the lives that they encountered along the way. And I also acknowledge I don't want to minimize people's pain. I don't want to minimize the pain and people go, well, you know, I don't have much opportunity to matter is a concern that some people tell me. And my wife has said this to me, you know, what about the people who feel like there's no open door for them?

1:11:52John R. Miles:There's going to be a door there if you can find one, whether it's in your community or reaching out to other people and, or even finding a younger person that you can make a difference in because they might need somebody to listen to them when nobody else's. And, you know, my wife was a school librarian and she had told me after she got one year as a school librarian, it was her goal. And then she retired and started about halfway through the year that there were five young girls who came and instead of going out for recess or for lunch, they would come to the library just to talk to her. And I said, you know, what difference are you making in their lives?

1:12:30John R. Miles:Because they're there for a reason. You're providing them with something that they are not getting enough of. And you're being a role model. I said, that'll probably be one of the hardest things about retiring is not having that daily interaction with those girls in this case. But there's so many different ways. If somebody, I think at the end of the day, the best advice I would tell somebody who feels they don't matter to others, regardless of that, you still need to matter to yourself. That you're not gonna let other people rule your emotions. You're not going to have to have other people make you feel a certain way that you're going to say, you know, I have a role to play.

1:13:08John R. Miles:I have a valuable role. And famous people have become legendary. I've already known about this. Fred Rogers, who started his work in Canada, by the way, before he went to Pittsburgh, said his number one goal was to let every kid know they matter because they all do matter. And I know that's the case with Oprah and others. It's like everybody has a need to matter. But at the end of the day, don't let others rule your emotion. Find a way that you matter to yourself so you'll go get help if you need it, or you'll go to the appointment that you're supposed to go to so that you're valuing yourself so that you'll be around longer and then can make a difference in other people's lives.

1:13:49Gordon Flett:Gord, I love what you just said because it's exactly why I wrote You Matter, Luma, because every child needs to hear those words, you matter, before the world teaches them otherwise.

1:14:00John R. Miles:Yeah. Yeah. And one last plug for Angela. She told me one day, she goes, you know, I'm kind of the person who came up with the you matter phrase from her TED talk like 15 years ago. And then it got embraced in terms of prevention efforts. But, you know, wouldn't everybody be doing so much better if everybody did have a sincere and unconditional deep sense of mattering? You want to talk about world change, that's the route to go.

1:14:24Gordon Flett:So, Gord, always such an honor to get to talk to you. And thank you so much for coming back on Passion Struck and love the new work that you have coming out and such a powerful article that will be coming out in the next month.

1:14:37John R. Miles:Thank you so much. You know, I love to have these conversations and it's like kindred spirits, which, of course, comes from the great Canadian Anne of Green Gables story, which is really about mattering when you think about it. I say to parents, read Anne of Green Gables with your kids because Anne comes as an orphan, gets adopted by the people who finally see her and care about her. And then she forgoes her teaching career because Marilla needs her, spoiler alert, after Matthew dies. And I realized at one point that's why that story resonates with people so much. The sense of being lost, being taken in by people who care, and then sticking around to make a difference in their lives.

1:15:15John R. Miles:Everybody has the potential.

1:15:18Gordon Flett:What a way to close. Thank you again, Gordon.

1:15:21John R. Miles:Thank you.

1:15:22Gordon Flett:That brings us to the end of today's conversation with Gordon Flett. If this episode stayed with you, it's likely because it touched something deeper than insight. It touched recognition. Because what Gordon's work reveals is this. Anti-mattering is not a minor feeling. It's a psychological state that reshapes how we see ourselves and the world. Loneliness and insignificance often travel together. what he calls double jeopardy, feeling unseen and alone at the same time. And mattering is not optional in childhood. It's a core developmental need that shapes identity, agency, and resilience. The most important takeaway is that one person, one teacher, one parent, one moment of attention can change everything.

1:16:07Gordon Flett:Today's episode is a reminder that mattering doesn't require grand gestures. it's built in small moments, being noticed, being listened to, being remembered. And today, as You Matter Luma enters the world, that message feels more important than ever, because every child deserves to hear those words before the world teaches them otherwise. If this conversation resonated with you, share it with someone who may need to be reminded that they matter. Leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and explore the reflections and resources at the ignitedlife.net. To continue the work, learn more about You Matter Luma at youmatterluma.com.

1:16:47Gordon Flett:Explore pasttheripple.com and how to bring it into your home or classroom and watch the full conversation on YouTube. And next, we continue this journey into the architecture of mattering and human behavior with Dr. Martin Shaw, New York Times bestselling author of Liturgies of the Wild, which gives us a new encounter with myths beyond the world that Joseph Campbell created. I love this episode and can't wait for you to check it out.

1:17:16John R. Miles:I talk in the book about making a covenant with limit,

1:17:19Gordon Flett:because I don't think that's encouraged anymore with all the free credit cards and that you can be anybody you want and all of that kind of thing. Actually, myths say something very radical, very unfashionable. You are meant to be something quite specific. You're not meant to be a million different things. you're meant to trade growth for depth. So what I mean by that is growth is a wonderful thing. I've grown, but when it's a kind of hysterical growth that the internet and modern media encourages, you become three miles wide, two inches deep, you know? And I'm always looking for something that has greater depth.

1:17:56Gordon Flett:Until then, remember, you matter when your presence is felt. You matter when your absence is noticed. and you matter most when you help someone else feel the same. I'm John Miles, and you've been PassionStruck.